ALL YOU NEED IS LOVE FRIENDS

By Doni Aldine

DID YOU KNOW?

There’s an official International Friendship Month and Friendship Day?

National Today is an organization that works to gather special holidays and moments from around the world — “the occasions that bring people together — and help everyone celebrate.” With this in mind, nationaltoday.com outlines the history of International Friendship Month, which takes place in February:

“In 1958, Paraguay became the first country to announce Friendship Day, which was to be celebrated on July 30. As the world reels from unprecedented times, we need international solidarity now more than ever. The friendship between nations and their citizens is essential to global prosperity, and celebrating this spirit of brotherhood and commonality is the key essence behind the day.

“While we celebrate Friendship Day on the first Sunday of August, the month-long celebration of friendship in unison with the world falls in February. The origin and designation of this observation remain unclear, but the intention does not. International Friendship Day honors the beauty and necessity of friendships in our lives and is a call to bridge the gap between strangers and acquaintances.”

From Italy to Buenos Aires, Shanghai to Vancouver and beyond, this era’s “Women of a Certain Age” are garnering attention from varied spaces. That certain age is 50-plus years on the planet. Hyped on social media for embracing gorgeous grey locks and impressing the masses like the thirtysomethings of yesteryear in mind, body and spirit, people — especially women, are exuding fearlessness as they grow older. Could some of that fearlessness come from the confidence of friendship?

In a 2015 United Statesbased TED Talk titled, “Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin, A Hilarious Celebration of Lifelong Female Friendships,” interviewer Pat Mitchel opens by citing a quote: “You can tell a lot about someone, in this case a woman, by the company she keeps.

If that’s the case, then the group you’re about to meet has impeccable taste.

Prompted by native New Yorker Stephanie Clarke’s wish to have a non-schleppy beach birthday, this crew descended upon Arusha, the Serengeti and Zanzibar in Tanzania, Africa, for an epic 50th safari, no-holdsbarred beach holiday.

“It started with, ‘I want to go somewhere fabulous for my birthday,’” says Clarke, who had enjoyed beach birthday celebrations close to home every year for the last decade. “Family and friends, we’d go to my local beach and we’d just hang out. It was just a nice day.

“But to make it a nice day there’s a lot of schlepping. So there’s the umbrellas, and the bags, and the food, and the kids and going to the store…” her voice trails, overtaken by a momentary look of breathlessness. “To make it a nice day, it’s a lot of schlepping — it’s always like a big deal and you’re exhausted when you get there.”

She then birthed the idea of going to the beach, but with full pampering treatment.

“I think one day I said, ‘You know what — one day we are going to go away for my birthday. We’re going to be on the beach but we’re going to be treated. People are going to come to us. We’re not going to bring all this stuff to the beach, they will bring it to us.”

A friend suggested Tanzania had beautiful beaches, igniting Clarke’s globetrotting fire. After all, if she decided on a birthday beach bash on the other side of the world, why not enjoy all that location had to offer?

“And I thought, ‘Well, if I’m going to go all the way to Tanzania, I’m going on safari —

Stephanie Clarke

Native New Yorker, hailing from the Bronx, Stephanie earned her Bachelor of Arts in Political Science at Yale University, where she also studied Theatre. Actor, working in TV, Film and Theater in NYC, as well as portrayed Rosa Parks in theatrical U.S. tour. Daughter to Sonja, college roommate to Cherise, fellow bridesmaid at Cherise’s wedding with Vicky. Auntie to her brother’s daughter and her two daughters. Godmother to Cherise’s daughters. “Trips with mom inspired my love of travel. Our first big trip was to Greece when I was 10, followed by Egypt, more tours of Europe, India/Nepal, Australia/New Zealand.”

Brown Clarke

Her 1936 unwed teenage parents so scandalized her maternal grandmother, that her grandmother then raised her. “Her manner from an 1895 upbringing, vs. Mom’s 1920s caused ongoing friction except regarding education. Therefore, school became transformative. As a married adult with two children, I enrolled in college, then, graduate school, earning two Masters in Education. I taught public school, second grade and college writing as an adjunct professor. Education fueled my love of learning, provided funding for travel to three continents, various U.S. excursions and Mexico. Now a great-grandmother, I share my acquired wisdom: Travel — invaluable knowledge is gained by leaving your comfort zone.”

I’m going to make it a whole thing. We’re going to make it a bucket list trip,’” she says.

After sharing the idea with Cherise Fisher, Clarke’s undergraduate roommate from Yale who also would be celebrating her 50th trip around the sun, the idea was solidified. “I go where Stephanie leads me,” Fisher says. “It didn’t take a lot of convincing.”

Fisher is the main connection to the final Tanzania safari/beach birthday group, as aptly noted by group member Vicky Levy during their appearance on Culturs’ “Destinations With Doni” podcast. With friendship spans of 20-plus years to as long as, well, their entire lives, this group and their extended friend and family groups get what it takes to thrive as life gets golden.

Fisher and Levy (who also was turning 50) have been friends since age 12. Upon hearing about the upcoming escapade over lunch, Levy quizzed, “why am I not invited to this?”

“We were not going to invite partnered people because we just assumed married people wouldn’t want to leave their husbands,” says Fisher. But Levy’s husband Tucker was all in, encouraging his wife to go. He would happily hold down the fort and take care of their daughter. The two wound up spending an epic 36 hours in Dubai hosted by another decadeslong friend on their way to Tanzania.

Along for the ride came Fisher’s cousin Nicole Kennedy and me, with my motto “you gotta show up for people.”

Harder to convince was Clarke’s octogenarian mother, Sonja Brown Clarke.

The woman who’d taken her pre-teen daughter around the world to see sights they’d previously known only on screen in their favorite films, suddenly was willing to clip her own wings post-COVID.

Clarke shares, “The reason I’m a traveler is because of her, but she was nervous to go on the trip.”

In the end, the motherdaughter bond won. “It was the very best trip of my entire life,” shares Brown-Clarke, who had been traveling since she was young because of her own mother’s profession as a dancer.

Even so, “I had to convince her this wouldn’t be a rough trip,” laughs Clarke. “This was going to be glamping.”

Reminiscing on their previous trips, Brown-Clarke shares, “Stephanie was always ready to go. She was my travel partner.”

As much friend as daughter, perhaps?

Multiple studies, including a 308,000-participant Australian Longitudinal Study of Aging, found people with the most friends have a 22 percent better chance of outliving those with few friends. Moreover, friendship has a bigger impact on those odds than close family, children or other relatives.

In a 2017 Inc.com article on work-life balance, Jeff Haden called it the “one secret to living a longer, healthier life.”

Haden writes, “A clinical review of nearly 150 studies found that people with strong social ties had a 50 percent better chance of survival, regardless of age, sex, health status and cause of death than those with weaker ties.” Continuing to cite that” with “Additionally, researchers put the health risk of having few friends in line with smoking 15 cigarettes a day, “and more dangerous than being obese or not exercising in terms of decreasing your lifespan.”

Montserratian-American born who grew up on the island and in the N.Y./New Jersey area as a child of immigrants. After undergrad at Yale, began her career in publishing more than 25 years ago, spending many years editing and publishing several national bestselling and award-winning authors at Simon & Schuster and Plume (an imprint of Penguin Random House), where she was Editor-inChief. “I now work with novelists who have multiple compulsively readable yarns in their head (both historical and contemporary), memoirists who showcase the diversity of human experience and non-fiction writers who seek to provoke, inspire and educate.” Her intention is that all the books she helps bring into the world are relevant, enduring and help readers maximize their life.

We’re talking real friends here — not social media friends, acquaintances or those with whom you are “friendly.”

Not only can you possibly live a longer, healthier life, those friends can potentially increase financial wealth as well. During the interview, Levy noted that a strong theme throughout the group is that each is a product of strong mothers (like BrownClarke). In addition, however, a Harvard Business Reviewpublished study found that women who have a strong circle of friends are more likely to earn executive positions with higher pay.

Levy

Peruvian-American, New Yorker currently living in Boston. Lived and worked Switzerland for five years with her husband and 13 yr old daughter, Gracie. Wife, sister and friend. She’s been a Management Consultant for 25 years, currently leading Deloitte’s life sciences (pharmaceutical, med tech and bio tech) practice globally. “I have the privilege of inspiring and harnessing the power of over 30k individuals around the Deloitte network who are in the practice,” she says. Loves global travel, sports and the outdoors.

In the HBR February 2019 article, “Men and Women Need Different Kinds of Networks to Succeed,” writer Brian Uzzi concludes: “Women who were in the top quartile of centrality and had a female-dominated inner circle of one to three women landed leadership positions that were 2.5 times higher in authority and pay than those of their female peers lacking this combination.”

So next time a friend asks you to take an off-the-cuff, potentially life-changing (no matter how fabulous your life has been), trip with the girls? Pause and think it through before you answer.

For more information, check the link or scan the QR code below. cultursmag.com/all-you-need-is-love-and

Tech And Trends

By Andrea Bazoin, M.Ed., Founder of everHuman